Postmaster Jerry Gordon inside the small room that serves as the U.S.Post Office located inside the Rolling Hills General Store.This pic should run secondary, not sharp. Photo by Brad Graverson/The Daily Breeze 9-19-13

More than 75 years of uninterrupted postal service in Rolling Hills Estates is scheduled to end Nov. 30, when the tiny post office inside the landmark Rolling Hills General Store closes for the final time.

The quaint store, which sits at the corner of Rolling Hills Road and Palos Verdes Drive North just outside the gates of Rolling Hills, is an integral part of the Palos Verdes Peninsula’s equestrian heritage. It’s known for its hitching post, where horse riders can leave their mounts while at Kelly’s Korner snack bar, an independently operated business inside that shares the historic structure with the general store.

The building landlord, who rents out the space for the general store and snack bar, is shutting down the United States Postal Service Contract Postal Unit that first opened in September 1937, USPS spokesman Rich Maher confirmed Thursday.

“The CPU at 26947 Rolling Hills Road only sold stamps and produced low revenue,” he said via email. “They finally decided to end the contract because it was not profitable for them.”

Pauline Becker, whose family has long owned what is the city’s oldest structure, declined substantive comment.

That’s a turnabout from 1994 and 1996, when money-losing USPS twice attempted to shut down the post office in cost-cutting moves.

Back then, Becker and the community rallied to save the store’s postal service.

They submitted petitions containing hundreds of signatures. Politicians such as then U.S. Rep. Jane Harman joined the outcry. And the USPS backed off, preserving a neighborhood fixture manned by Jerry Morgan, who today has worked about 30 years in the tiny postal office with water stains on its ceiling.

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Becker said back then she planned to buy a new sign for the structure that once housed City Hall and was declared a municipal historic landmark in the 1970s.

“It will say, ‘thank you. The post office has been saved,’ ” she told the Daily Breeze. “The community really wanted it. I’m very happy to be able to keep it open.”

But this time it is Becker and her family who are planning to close the post office, which perhaps explains why she has become media shy in the ensuing almost 20 years.

She was vague on her plans, saying nothing had yet been finalized.

“We don’t want to alarm anybody,” Becker said. “We’re working on a change.”

Maher said the outlet has applied to become an “approved shipper.” Those kinds of businesses are not paid by USPS and often charge customers a service fee on top of, for example, the price of a stamp.

Currently, as a CPU the post office receives a percentage of its sales. But sources told the Daily Breeze that sales are so slow they often don’t amount to more than $100 a day.

“A generation ago you had to go to a post office or a CPU to buy stamps,” Maher said. “But today there are so many ways for customers to get stamps with the many expanded access channels we have set up.”

It’s not as if the community will be left without postal service.

A large post office on Deep Valley Drive serves The Hill.

But the old post office, housed in a simple clapboard structure that looks very much as it did when first built, is one of an ever-diminishing number of ties to The Hill’s rural past.

“It would be a huge loss to the community,” wrote local resident Dianne Hawke via email.

Morgan, who is finally looking forward to a belated retirement, said he will no longer man whatever postal counter remains.